Did you take part in a home interview, and visit a Data Collection Site?

Participants who were visited by an in-home interviewer and then went to one of our 11 Data Collection Sites across Canada for a range of physical assessments are part of the ‘comprehensive’ assessment. The baseline data collection on these individuals was completed in early July 2015, with the first follow-up data collection beginning later that month. The first follow-up data collection will finish in March 2018.

As you have consented to take part in this study for 20 years, you will be asked to again answer questions during an in-home interview, that are mostly the same as during your first interview. There are a few additional questions in the first follow-up, to ensure we are gathering the most comprehensive data.

The in-home interview will take about 90 to 100 minutes, and you will be asked questions about your physical, medical and emotional health, cognition, as well as the social, lifestyle and economic aspects of your life.

The interviewer will also schedule you to visit a Data Collection Site to again undergo a range of physical assessments, including height and weight measurements, blood pressure, bone density, cognitive tests, vision and hearing tests, and to provide information on disease symptoms, and social aspects of aging.

As per your earlier consent, we will again collect blood and urine samples that will be analyzed to learn about aspects of biology and the genetics of aging, health, and disease. Data Collection Site visits take about 2.5 hours.

You may also be asked to provide the CLSA with a Proxy Consent form to allow someone other than yourself to answer questions about your health if you are no longer able to take part in the interview on your own at this time, or in the future.

If you previously agreed to share your provincial health insurance number with the CLSA, but have not yet done so, we will be asking for it. Health insurance numbers allow researchers to link the information you provide to health care or other databases held by public institutions (for example, each provincial Ministry of Health keeps databases about your visits to doctors, hospital admissions, medication prescriptions or mortality records). Your decision to provide a health card number is voluntary, and will not affect your participation in the study.

Approximately 18 months after your Data Collection Site visit, a CLSA interviewer will call you to ask a few questions to confirm your address, phone number, and the names of your alternate contacts.